But really, our leaders are not kind in any kind of way.
If it could help ease our frustration, we would burn our flag and throw the ashes into the sea. Well, okay, truly maybe our anger isn’t towards the flag. I forgot.
For us, it’s been a long chase for good standard of living. Long hopes for a better country where social amenities are all in place.
We’ve now had many seasons of waiting. Heads have been pressed tirelessly to prayer mats in the mosques, a million voices raised to Allah. In churches, holy and unholy hands have been raised to the heavens, with sweats and tears praying ‘dear lord save our land.’
Everyday we still say the prayers. Though we no longer know if it’s okay to have faith on not to have faith.
“Na God go save us for this country,” is the commonest sentence on the lips of my countrymen. We say it when police officers stop us on the road, and even after they had seen the particulars (nothing missing) they still wear straight faces and delay you for not accompanying the particulars to their hands with some naira notes for goodwill.
We say it when our cars bump into ‘wicked’ potholes, the type that throws you up from the car seat and make you hiss un-christian hiss out of incoherence. We say it when Boko Haram on their blind mission yet again hit with their weapons of death, killing our innocent brothers.
We say it when you want to pay for that apartment you like, but the realtor is asking for 2years rent upfront with 40percent commission. We say it when we again read or hear the never ending news of the virus of corruption that is eating deeper into the veins of our nation’s polity. And I have only just finished saying it, when I unintentionally calculated the amount of money I’ve spent on petrol for power generating set this month.
We’ve always been in the dispensation of no power supply, no good roads, no water. O ga o, na only God go save for this country.
My intention is not to litter the street of your ears with dung of wearying stories of an economy that in not fair to its own citizens. No! Who am I? What do I know about economies anyway. I only want to say my mind. Because the thoughts are awake in me, like nights when the noise from the generator sends my sleep on errands.
I have since assumed the role of a dream saviour. When I listen to friends, younger and older, tell how helplessly they’ve had to watch the country’s situation strain and shred their dreams. The number of times I have had to tap them on the shoulders and say “No my brother, Nooo! We cannot allow the country and its challenges do that to us. As we trudge further on the path of making dreams come true, maybe, just maybe persistence can help us find spring water from our rotten rocks. We have no more new expectations, our previous expectations still lay waiting.
Just like we didn’t chose our family, we also didn’t chose the country of our birth.
We are on the earth to tread the path that we must trod, so we’ll keep holding on to the arms of our strong, firm hopes.
And even if the scissors we’ve found in our hands would not allow us to cut a smooth, pretty pattern with the fabric that we so much cherish, still, it’s our fabric, it’s our dream, we will not let it ruin.
Yes, the many unhealthy situation of our nation is creating monstrous rumbling in our bowels. We have since accepted fate, even though it’s not right. And we have learned to now fold our arms and watch, with raised brows we sit and watch our leaders climb on podiums, they speak into microphones words that we do not want to hear, words that do not interest our ears.
We watch their overweight stomach push forward, stomach bloated with lies and greed, and more greed. Their hearts are obsessed with vain acquisitiveness. “Grab and chop what you can, when you can” is their polity inglorious anthem, and they sing it with such wicked passion. They are unrepentant, they continually exhaust our nation’s strength and fertility.
Our expectations have been so stretched. Our helplessness, our angers now make our bodies shake. And we are tired of upsetting our already angry bowels.
The strong whiff of poverty stand mocking, our leaders turn their faces away, pretending not to see.
There are more naked children than clothed ones, dirty children licking their salty phlegm, looking, watching their forlorn mothers sit with hands clasped in-between wrinkled thighs, gazing into a future that is as weak as their today. Yet our leaders fly on bulletproof airplanes, and they live lives larger than their nation’s treasury.
Millions of our nation’s brilliant, strong youths keep having their childhood hopes and wishes tormenting their existence. The unfair realities of today have made many of them to coil into themselves like scared millipede. They’ve allowed the dawn on uncertainty to capture their gaze.
Okay, our dear leaders, I know that it is hard and near impossible to tell you not to steal our money. We already know that you steal, and that you will steal more. But please we want stable power supply, we want good roads, easy transportation system, we want security, we want healthy tables and chairs and competent teachers in our public schools.
So, of the money that has been, and will be released for the execution of projects; instead of you taking 80percent for yourself, 10percent for settlements, only to leave just 10percent for the project that the money was originally allocated for, can we at-least have a say on the percentage you steal?
If you will not listen to us, “we take God beg you,” can you try to buy a new conscience? One that is capable of keeping you awake at nights to tell you that your evil deeds far outweighs your good deeds.
Again last week I saw a petrol tanker sway off its lane into another lane, so fast just to avoid a big deep pothole. That brief decision that almost caused a 14passenger Toyota bus to ram into it. It almost happened. It was so close. Too close that all through that day, I said a ‘Thank You’ to God for the lives of the 15people – including the driver in that bus. A ‘thank You’ to God because their lives and possibilities wasn’t cut short, their families didn’t have to shed tears, and the hearts of their loved ones didn’t get broken.
But what about the ones that weren’t lucky? What about the ones that won’t be lucky tomorrow? Big deep holes, death traps on our highway. Yet again and again we’ve heard billions of money that have been dished out for this projects. But we looked yesterday, and we looked today, and what we see are bigger, deeper potholes.
What we hear these days is the intermittent sigh of our own frustrations. But seriously, we are not asking for too much. Just this one, two, three, four, five things. And our living in our own nation will become a lot easier.
OLUWAKEMI OMOWAIRE, @oluwakemifully.
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